By Kasha Dragon
The track and field world championships are over. The athletes, medals in hand or not, have packed up and left the heretofore little-known South Korean city of Daegu and scattered to their homes all over the globe.
Most of the world has moved on.
But in Grenada, one of the world’s smallest island nations and in one of its smallest communities, the fishing village of Gouyave, on its west coast, there’re still celebrating the less-than-45 seconds it took to put them on the map of the track and field universe.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
A decade after the No Child Left Behind Act became law, the achievement gap still yawns as schools across the country reopen for a new year.

Just days after the 46th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and Georgia attorney Wayne Kendall filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Fayette County, Georgia’s at-large method of electing members to the County Board of Commissioners and Board of Education violates the Act.  The case was filed on behalf of the Georgia State Conference NAACP, Fayette County NAACP, and Black voters of Fayette County.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, along with a broad coalition of civil rights groups, education advocates, public rights groups, and others, sent a letter urging federal involvement in accountability through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
This letter marks the first time that such as broad assemblage of organizations has spoken in one voice on the need for a strong federal role in educational accountability, particularly for students of color.  The stand these groups have taken will set the tone for when Congress resumes the ESEA reauthorization debate after the August congressional recess.

Source: The Root
While some of the gridlock among policymakers today can be chalked up to principled differences in political philosophy, some political stalemates are the result of policies that defy common sense. This most often happens when politicians ignore basic realities in order to further their own ideologies. This behavior is frustrating in any instance but is particularly galling when the needs of kids are involved.

By The Editors
A federal jury in New Orleans Friday convicted five current and former New Orleans polices officers of charges stemming from their unprovoked shooting of two groups of unarmed civilians on a city bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

By LDF
The American Bar Association has announced that Elaine R. Jones, former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), will receive the organization’s 2011 Thurgood Marshall Award Saturday.

By Lee A. Daniels
The first thing I noticed yesterday when I went searching on amazon.com for the books written by Frank Borzellieri, who has gained a certain notoriety in New York City in the last week, is that all three of them have a photograph of him on the cover.

By Lee A. Daniels
The debt-ceiling crisis that threatened America’s economic foundation has abated for now.
But the jobs crisis and the foreclosure crisis which continue to threaten the present and future of millions of ordinary Americans have not.